…if, you know, you’re fond of Siberia and don’t value your life
When you prank the guy who rules one-sixth of the earth’s surface, you either have balls of steel or you’re clinically insane.
Tsar Nicholas I of Russia is generally known as a hard-ass. Mention his reign to an academic, and they’ll tell you about censorship, repression, authoritarianism, and the slow but inexorable march to revolution that began with Nicholas’s suppression of the Decembrist revolt in 1825.
Nicholas was a fearsome figure to ordinary Russians…unless your name was Trubetskoy. This is the man who dared to pull not one but two epic pranks on the most powerful man in the world.
In today’s world, this is the equivalent of putting a whoopee cushion on Putin’s presidential chair…during a live press conference.
Proceed with caution.
Fear Factor
Nicholas wasn’t afraid of the Ottoman Empire or the Prussians, but he was deathly afraid of one tiny creature — a black beetle. One day, as he got into his carriage to leave the palace, he looked down and realized it was covered with crawling black beetles. Not one, not a dozen, but hundreds of them, squirming their way all over him.
Understandably, Nicholas freaked out. He shouted for help and banged on the walls of the carriage. This freaked the hell out of his coachman, who thought the tsar was being murdered inside.
When they stopped the coach, everyone realized what had happened: Nicholas had been pranked.
The prankster? Prince Trubetskoy, “the mad Prince.” Nicholas scolded him, but ultimately pardoned him.
What a Drag
You’d think Trubetskoy would have rested on his laurels as the gold-medal-winning ballsiest prankster of St. Petersburg.
